As an apparatus for producing different kinds of food products including liquid food products such as curry, stew, soup and sauce and paste food products such as paste mustard, paste Japanese horseradish, pizza sauce and paste garlic, a continuous production apparatus employing transport pipes in many of transfer processes has been used, in which food materials such as liquid, solid, powdery and paste materials are introduced into a compounding hopper by means of transfer pipes, the obtained compounding materials are further transferred from said compounding hopper to the next processing process such as a mixing and stirring processing process and a heat-treating process by means of transfer pipes, and the obtained processed products are transferred to the next process.
Namely, as a continuous apparatus for producing food products, those in which processing devices in processing processes from compounding of food materials to the final products are connected by means of transfer pipes and food materials, processed products and intermediate products thereof are transferred by means of said transfer pipes have been generally used.
In addition, an apparatus for processing food products has been developed in which a stainless steel vessel is filled with contents, said vessel is rolled to mix the contents, and then the obtained product is transferred to each process.
The above continuous production apparatus connected with transfer pipes is suitable for producing the same product industrially in a vast amount, namely, so-called mass production of one kind of product; on the other hand, however, it has the following problems.
That is, in a continuous production apparatus with processing devices in processing processes connected with transfer pipes, each processing device is connected with said transfer pipe and fixed, and hence it is difficult to change the connection of each production process freely. Therefore, in order to produce products with some of processing processes largely different simultaneously or successively, it is necessary to provide a special device suited for producing said products separately or to modify said continuous production apparatus for producing the above products.
Besides, in the continuous production apparatus connected with transfer pipes, it is necessary that all processes from the introduction of materials to the preparation treatment of the final product are performed in succession once production starts; hence, once the operation of said continuous production apparatus starts, it is impossible to cease the apparatus at an optional production process at an optional time; for example, in order to perform the cleaning of the apparatus needed in case of producing another kind of product successively or maintenance of a part of the apparatus, it is necessary to cease the apparatus over all processing processes temporarily, and as a result, in case of producing plural kinds of products, there occurs a problem of a remarkable decrease of production efficiency.
Moreover, in order to perform the cleaning of the apparatus after use in each production process and the repair of damaged parts in the production apparatus connected with transfer pipes, it is often necessary that the whole disassembling or assembling of the apparatus over all processing processes is performed simultaneously, and the work is complicated over an extremely broad range and needs much time, which has restricted the improvement of production efficiency.
Furthermore, in a conventional continuous production apparatus with processing devices in processing processes connected with transfer pipes to fix, materials remain in said transfer pipes after the cease of production inevitably, which causes a problem that a considerable loss of materials occurs.
On the other hand, an apparatus in which the above stainless steel vessel is filled with contents, said vessel is rolled to mix the contents, and then the obtained mixture is transferred to the next process is a pipeless type; however, it only performs preparation by rolling a preparation tank capable of being sealed and preparation is restricted to specific one such as vacuum pasteurization preparation, and hence it is difficult to utilize it as an apparatus for producing general food products broadly.
Recently in the field of the production of food products, the trend of high-quality products including the variety of kinds of products to be produced in a production line and a lot of varieties has been heightened, which makes it important to establish a production apparatus and a production system suited for the production of different kinds of products in small amounts differing from the conventional production apparatus and production system suited for the mass production of the same product; since the conventional large-scale continuous production apparatus with transfer pipes connected to fix suitable for the mass production of the same product involves various problems including the above, it becomes more difficult to use it as it is as a production apparatus or a production system with production in a small amount as a target. Accordingly, there has been a strong demand for developing a new type of production apparatus and production system capable of dissolving the above problems found in said conventional continuous production apparatus surely and being used for the production of different kinds of products in small amounts suitably in the field concerned.